Yesterday was International Women's Day. As I completely missed it, I am now expected to turn in my uterus and be forever expelled from the Womyn Power Club.
I have been catching up on some of what I missed by visiting some of my favorite blogs, like Pandagon, Feministing, and Echidne of the Snakes. As expected, most of the mainstream discourse on the subject is dude-centric, since some yahoo always feels the need to ask, "When is International Men's Day?!"
I am forced to giggle as I remember back to when I was 6 years old, and I asked my mom,
"Mom, how come there is a Mother's Day and a Father's Day, but there's no Children's Day?"
I had chosen my moment well. Mom was fresh off a 9-hour work day, and was picking up my toys while she kept dinner simmering on the stove. Dad was outside breaking ice off the driveway so that he wouldn't have to do it at 6:00 the next morning before work.
Mom fixed me with her eye and said, firmly, "Kid, every day is Children's Day."
Even at six, I got the point.
Sorry, dudes, but there's one downside to holding the vast majority of political, financial, and social power throughout the entire world, and that is that you aren't going to get to enjoy a completely obscure and generally ignored nominal holiday. I know, I know, this is clearly oppression and men are obviously facing a kind of discrimination that dwarfs anything women have ever had to endure. But I know you manly folks will be able to suck it up.
4 Comments:
Hey, women don't need a day either, they have my complete attention every day of the year.
What they need, is pepper spray.
It never fails to surprise me how members of my class (white males) manage to interpret a lessening of our inherent social advantage as persecution by less powerful groups. It's as delusional as saying that you're persecuted in the US for being a Christian.
of course, the analogy doesn't really hold, because the world's poor are its children,(excepting treasured suburban progeny, of course) quite the opposite from the gender thing and the privilege of males.
However, good to hear the rant since I have rants of my own after reading the Bhagavad Gita for my book group, in translation of course, and with enthusiastic encomiums from Thoreau, which fits...the man who was getting away from it all at Walden Pond brought his laundry home to mother, I hear...and in the B.G., they speak of getting away from it all, a male thing only (being born female was a demotion and a sign that you blew it in a previous life) which infuriates me because of course while they are up on the mountainside getting enlightened and eschewing worldly committments, the second class was doing their laundry, too, and raising little future enlightened ones..but then that is why all the college guys thirty some years ago were so enthusiastic, too, about the damn book, hey, be mellow, man, and do you want a joint? Euuw.
I like John Oliver.
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